By the time I got to junior high, I was really confused about negative numbers. At first it was simple, but concepts like multiplying negatives and absolute value taxed my understanding. Of course, I joined in on the chorus sung by every math student who doesn’t understand what he or she is supposed to be […]
hands-on learning
Learning Place Value with a Hands-on Activity
As a homeschool dad, I found it easy to fall into the trap of believing that my young child understood a number because she could say it and count to it. When my second daughter was in kindergarten, we enjoyed skip counting to a trillion by 100 billions. She felt like she grasped the number […]
Help Your Second Grader with Division
As your homeschool child becomes proficient in multiplication, it’s time to introduce division. Typically, children become comfortable with division in their third-grade year of math. But the end of second grade is a good time to introduce the concept. Since math models God’s creational order, it helps to introduce division with physical objects. Using objects […]
Lego® Role-Play for Learning History
My oldest daughter learns verbally. She reads with understanding and incorporates new vocabulary into her responses to questions about material she’s learning. That makes teaching history to her easy and enjoyable. I am verbal, too, when sharing historical narratives and explaining conflicts of the past. So I was surprised when she started struggling early in […]
Activity for Simplifying Ratios
Ratios compare two quantities that are related. It’s a concept that can be challenging for kids to understand. As a child, I could solve problems related to ratios, but I never quite “got it” . . . that is, until my mother was teaching me how to half a recipe. For the recipe to work, […]
Playing with Spelling Words
From my daughter’s very first spelling test in first grade, I knew that she was going to struggle. And I knew that I was going to have to find ways to help her learn those spelling words. I soon realized that even though writing the words and spelling them aloud helped a little, in order […]
Dividing Fractions a Simpler Way
The twelve-year-old’s T-shirt reminded me of my own homeschool experience with fractions and made me chuckle with delight. The shirt said, “Did you know that 5 out of 4 people struggle with fractions?” When I was in the upper elementary grades, my mom switched us from a homeschool math program that used a hands-on approach […]